As a part of the ongoing National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant to process the Center’s Depression-era collections, the AHC has created several new finding aids for anti-trust collections that were previously unprocessed. The Oxford English Dictionary defines anti-trust as “Opposed to trusts or similar monopolistic combinations.” Anti-trust law is also known as competition law and refers to law that promotes or maintains market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies (Wikipedia). At any rate, the 20th century saw a flurry of anti-trust legislation and other measures to prevent the growth of monopolies by corporations. These lawyers’ papers reflect such efforts.

Philo Clarke Calhoun, undated. Philo C. Calhoun Papers, Box 2.

Hugh Baker Cox (1905-1973) was one such lawyer. Cox worked in the anti-trust division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the 1930s and early 1940s. He also served on the Board of Economic Warfare in London, concentrating on economic intelligence activities. Perhaps most notably, Cox worked on federal policy formulation regarding a dispute between Montgomery Ward and the National War Labor Board which resulted in the seizure of the company under presidential executive order.

Paul H. LaRue was an anti-trust lawyer who worked with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in Washington, D.C. first as a trial lawyer and later as attorney-adviser to the FTC commissioner in the early 1950s. After, he moved to Chicago and joined the firm Chadwell, Keck, Kayser, & Ruggles in 1958. There, he was a public member of the Illinois Conflict of Interest Laws Commission. LaRue authored many works on anti-trust publications. Earl W. Kintner (1912-1991) also worked as a trial lawyer with the FTC and went on to become chairman from 1959 to1961. Kintner was a proponent of industry self-regulation while simultaneously enforcing anti-trust measures. He also published and lectured on antitrust law, trade practices, and administrative law.

Young Philo Calhoun on a road trip with friends, undated. Other photographs in the collection show the group fishing and enjoying an outdoor meal with china teacups. Philo C. Calhoun Papers, Box 12.

Philo Clarke Calhoun (1889-1964) was an anti-trust lawyer who often partnered with another anti-trust notable, Judge Thurman Arnold. Together, the two are remembered as some of the New Deal’s most iconoclastic “trust-busters.” However, Calhoun had another, decidedly less aggressive hobby – Dickens scholarship. Calhoun was an expert on rare editions of Charles Dickens’s works, and also enjoyed hymnology.

Finally, Louis B. Schwartz was an attorney and lawyer known for his work on anti-trust laws and penal code reform. A legal scholar, Schwartz taught at a number of institutions, including Pennsylvania State University, the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, Harvard, Cambridge, and others. Schwartz served as a member of the Attorney General’s National Committee to Study the Anti-trust Laws from 1954-1955 and director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Law from 1968-1971.